1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of information management. More specifically, the present invention relates to management of Information Technology (IT) investments.
2. Background Information
Ever since the invention of computer, enterprises, business or otherwise, have used computers to improve the productivity of their workers and efficiency of their business operations. In the beginning, enterprises tended to focus in a handful of high priority operation areas, such as financial management, general ledger, payroll and so forth. While these projects were often important, and the investments were not insignificant, the investment often represented only a small portion of the enterprises' investment in infrastructure or research and development, and the overall success of the enterprises was not perceived to be critically dependent on these projects. Accordingly, except perhaps for periodic briefing for management of the organizational units that were directly impacted, senior management were seldom involved, and management of these projects were typically relegated to data processing professionals, and managed in an ad hoc manner.
Over time, continuing advances in computer and other related technology, such as networking and telecommunication, have made it economically as well as technically feasible to make available computing power to virtually every single worker of an enterprise, and support virtually every aspect of an enterprise's operations. As a result, the number as well as the type of applications have broaden, from individual worker productivity, such as word processing, email, and the like, to mission critical operations, such as reservation and flight scheduling in the case of the airline industry. The typical size and scope of many of these applications have also increased. In fact, not only the success of increasing number of conventional business enterprises are increasingly dependent on the success of their IT projects, we have new business enterprises, such as Internet access providers, Internet portals, e-Commerce companies, emerging that are made possible by information technology, which otherwise would not have existed.
With the increase in significance as well as in amount of investment, increasingly senior management of these enterprises are actively involved in the management of their enterprises' investment in IT. Unfortunately, while the significance and the investment in IT have skyrocketed in recent years, little advances have been made in the area of managing IT. Project managers, mid-level managers as well as senior executives continue to rely on a hodgepodge of non-integrated or poorly integrated individual software applications such as spreadsheet and project management applications.
Thus, increasingly there are interest and desire in having automated tools to assist management of all levels to manage these ever more critical IT projects.